


All Down But Nine

by theskywasblue



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-07
Updated: 2010-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-10 10:43:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mal doesn't blame himself for Inara leaving...</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Down But Nine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minidrag33](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=minidrag33).



Mal made it a point to be well and truly out of sight when they dropped Inara at the training house. Not that he didn’t want to have the chance to see her off – he would have liked nothing more than to confirm with his own eyes that she was off his ship for good – but for once his self-preservation kicked in and kept him away.

He would have just said something to get her panties in a bunch, likely, might even have made her angry enough to give him a good, old-fashioned slap in the jaw if he wasn’t careful. He didn’t know much about being careful, and what kind of goodbye kiss would that be? Just the sort she would be itching to give him, he was sure; and boy could that woman slap! It was probably all part of her training, along with fancy-dancing and a thousand and one ways to make a man happy in his pants. That had to be it.

When Serenity was back in the relative safety of space, less one crew member – and he had to remind himself again and again that Inara wasn’t _really_ a crew member, just a convenient way to get them a space in some of the more respectable ports; a bargaining chip, really – Mal went to the shuttle to see what kind of a sorry state she had left it in.

Kaylee gave him something of the stink-eye when he passed her on the walkway, but Mal pretended not to notice. He’d get her a new bit of machinery to tinker with or something cute and fluffy from the one of the bazaars and she’d get over being sore at him soon enough. It wasn’t like he had told Inara that she had to jump ship anyhow; he had never been able to tell her to do anything without her getting all spun about and accusing him of one rotten thing or the other.

For a whore she sure did have a thin skin about most things.

When the shuttle had belonged to Inara – by virtue of contract and timely rent – Mal had never thought twice about going in and out as he pleased like a cat through an open screen door, but suddenly with her gone he found himself hesitating on the threshold, unable to move his feet. Eventually, he pushed the thought to the back of his mind and the strange feeling deep down into his chest – a place that seemed already crammed dead-full of things he never admitted to feeling but always seemed to have room for more – and stepped through the door.

Inara’s fancy silks – hung from every wall to give the place an “air of civility” Inara claimed, though Mal thought they made it look like an opium den – were all still in place, but all her antique furniture and her trunks of fancy lady clothes were gone, as neatly and completely as if someone had snapped their fingers and magicked them away. The shuttle still had a familiar smell though, the musk of incense, perfumed sweetness and a tea-leaf bitterness. A womanly smell.

Inara’s smell.

Mal sat himself down on the edge of the bed, now stripped of its silk sheets, the bed where Inara had worked her business with any number of men richer and more well-connected than Mal could ever even hope to be – not that he ever hoped to be rich or well-connected...well, maybe rich – breathed in all of that scent he could gather up before Serenity’s air filters banished it forever, and told himself that none of it ever had been, or would be, his fault.

-End-


End file.
